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On the weekend before a total solar eclipse comes to Cannon Shoals, Danny Hayes, Allie Navarro and Joan Findlay find their way... some rather differently than others.

Here have an Eclipse Story. This is a story I wrote for myself for my birthday so it's maybe not the most accessible, but if you've been wondering whether Danny Hayes has a soul or Allie Navarro has a sense of propriety... thanks to Spudz and Luperkaios for putting on the welding glasses and looking at this one.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

"A Few Minutes of Darkness," by Rob Baird

---

Quick catchup if y'ain't familiar with these guys but wanna be:

Danny Hayes is a town cop and generally less-than-pleasant person. Melissa Dean is the mixed-breed canine daughter of Bobby Dean, who works at the Martin-Barlow lumber mill and got himself into some trouble last year. Melissa went to Dan to ask him for under-the-table help with the expectation of some tawdry quid pro quo; Danny decided not to go along with it and they've become conventional friends with Melissa serving as the stoat's moral compass since she is a Good Person and he is an It's Complicated But Not Really. It's a full-time job, which is handy; she's unemployed

Allison Navarro left Cannon Shoals in 2011 after being kicked out of the house by her stepmom. The ocelot returned in 2014, only to find that her boyfriend Stef had married, his band had broken up and the town had changed an awful lot. She's never quite gotten over her feelings for Stef, and eventually decided to leave again. When she went to tell him that, accepting her position as Bad Influence, Stef impulsively kissed her. But that was all, Guys. It was only a kiss (it was only a kiss).

Joan Findlay is a quirky, subdued Border Collie who wants to get out of Cannon Shoals and can't, leading her to eventually try driving off a cliff. In the aftermath of the accident, she gets closer to Zach Leon, a red squirrel who is taking over ownership of the Beachcomb-Inn from his ailing father. Eventually she makes some friends and travels outside the town, and although her depression and attention-deficit problems still bother her, she makes friends with Allie (who once dared her to climb a radio tower) and others, like her cousin Joe Morgan when he comes back with his fiancée Shanti Hsieh on Christmas.

Cannon Shoals is a run-down small logging and fishing village on the Oregon coast between Florence and Lincoln City. The collapse of the Pacific fisheries and environmental regulation limiting old-growth harvesting have hit the town hard, but its tight-knit population still manages to get by.

---

_ August 19th: Saturday _

"It looks like somebody fucked up," Danny Hayes said. "And you're gonna get crumbs on my damn sofa."

"This can't be the worst thing you've gotten on your sofa, Danny," his companion pointed out, laughing. "You don't think it's a_little_ clever? You think it's a little clever, c'mon. Do I need to feed you? I need to feed you."

The first time Melissa Dean had wound up in his apartment, Danny recalled, it had taken two bottles of beer and a lot of awkward silences to get more than a complete sentence out of the withdrawn Border Collie mix.Might've been better that way, all things considered.

Though he probably didn't mean it. Sometimes he thought things he didn't mean. Mel grinned, broke the cookie apart, and held one half of it close to his muzzle. "What do you need, airplane noises?"

"I don't need a fuckin' burnt... what, snickerdoodle?" It was weird hearing a word like that coming out of his mouth.

"No, it's chocolate... and I think there's some food coloring to darken it more."

"It_is_ burnt." The flat disk, rimmed with icing, had been intended by some imaginative baker to represent a solar eclipse. Danny was neither so imaginative nor such a goddamn twee retard.

"Caramelized," Melissa corrected. She gave up for the moment, put his half on the coffee table, and took a bite of her own. "That part didn't work as well. They'll sell out anyway."

"Fuckin' 'course they will," he snorted. "Well, I guess it could be worse. At least it's_honestly_ dumb instead of corporate marketing. Wasn't the fox, was it?" Ian Stachs ran the town's only decent coffee shop. Bit of a hippie, but still mostly okay. Dan expected better. Melly might've made it herself; she was good at baking. Her dad worked at the Martin-Barlow lumbermill: solid blue-collar labor, the kind that brings its daughters up to be housewives.

Melissa lived up to a lot of that stereotype, but couldn't take credit for the cookie. "No, I think it was one of the girls. I..." She helped herself to another bite, eyed what remained, and set it down next to the portion she'd allocated to him despite his wishes. "Maybe later. You doing anything, Danny?"

"Working. You ain't heard?" She shook her head and leaned back to listen. "Got everybody out workin' traffic. I mean, 520's gonna be backed up all the way to Oak Valley. Fuck, all the way to I-5--wouldn't surprise me. They got me keepin' track of the bridge. Make sure no dumbass drives over the side, I guess."

"That'll be kind of exciting, won't it?"

The mutt girl'd gotten friendly enough to speak up since they'd started talking, but not friendly enough to deal with his surliness. Danny_wanted_ to roll his eyes and tell her not to be such a fucking idiot, but she wouldn't appreciate it and he controlled himself. "Who the fuck you kiddin'? I said traffic. Ain't exactly ropin' down from a goddamn helicopter."

"Nah, but..." She shrugged. "All the people... that doesn't happen often."

No shit it doesn't. Cannon Shoals and Oak Valley put together were all of fifteen hundred people and the most exciting thing they got up to was incest and maybe the occasional DUI. "Hassle. It'll be hassle."

Mel poked the stoat's side with a gentle finger. He didn't growl at her when she did that, and she didn't expect him to return physical affection. It mostly worked out. "And_some_ excitement. This is the first total eclipse in decades. It is okay for people to anticipate it, you know."

One of Danny's old friends had managed to escape Cannon Shoals; she lived up in Portland, and she'd told him that most of the hotels all the way through the Willamette Valley were sold out. "Christ, yeah," he drawled. "I ain't got to enjoy years of anticipation payin' off with a few minutes of darkness since... fuck, I dunno..."

"Prom night?"

He allowed himself a chuckle. She was at her best uninhibited, rare as that was. Most of the time the mutt hid her latent wholesome farmer's-daughter cuteness behind shy, flattened ears. "Nah. Probably, like... last season of_Game of Thrones_. Not that you'd know, little miss sensitivity consultant."

"I just didn't like it, that's all."

"Uh huh."

"I didn't. It was all..." She made some kinda weird noncommittal murmuring noise, and left him to interpret it.

Danny wasn't really in the mood for figuring twitchy mutts out. "Whatever. So I guess you're doin' something, though? Got the glasses and everything."

"Not really... I guess I'll_probably_ just go to the mill with dad." Mel's dad was a dingo; if she'd gotten anything from him it was in the stockiness of her build. Her fuzzy collie ears came by way of her mother, and as was her too-fucking-frequent habit they swiveled back and disappeared. "Not my first choice, but..."

"It's gonna be better than wavin' idiots through the detour up Kydonia, trust me."

"Probably. Maybe I'll... I don't_have_ to go anywhere... I was supposed to be watching Becky's kid, but... I guess they decided they didn't want to drive and..."

"Smart."

"Yeah." Mel didn't sound convinced. She picked her cookie back up and took another bite. Stalling. "I think they just don't trust their car. Hasn't worked since the accident."

He had no idea what that meant, and no idea if he was_supposed_ to know. "Accident?"

"I told you back in June," she said. Sure enough, mildly irritated, though since she'd gotten all chatty his life was full of banal stories and they ran together. "Brandon's Suburban got rear-ended just south of the bridge. The other guy didn't have insurance."

"Doesn't he, though?"

"Yeah, but they needed the money for something else. The car makes a weird noise when you brake, I guess."

Dan raised an eyebrow. "Safe to drive? I need to pull him over and--"

"Don't. Come on, Danny. I..." Agitation twitched the mutt's ears, and now she was out of cookie to fidget with. "Sorry. Sorry for cutting you off."

"Jesus wept. It's fine. They gonna get it fixed? I mean, ain't that side collies? If he goes into the guardrail like that other collie girl... she had a fuckin' Civic or somethin' and it almost went over. ODOT's crack engineers ain't gonna stand a chance against a Suburban. You think yer mood's bad now, wait 'til I have to try to bake you some kinda condolence shit."

Her mood brightened just a little, enough for a quiet giggle. "Yeah? I can see you coming over here with leftover sub sandwich casserole. Okay. I think they're getting it fixed... Becky was trying to work something out with Brit... I don't know, I guess it'll be okay. Don't pull them over, though, okay? Please?"

Danny promised that he would do his best, and let her navigate the television into some inoffensive '90s sitcom. He could mostly ignore it and zone out--Melly was doing the same; she wasn't_that_ big of an idiot--until halfway through, when the signal dropped.

The dog straightened in her seat. "Why'd it stop?"

He fiddled around with controls, but the screen stayed dark and nothing looked like it was about to change it. The light on his router had started blinking, too. "Lost the Internet."

Mel sighed. "One more thing, huh..."

"This is one more thing? Nah, this is just shitty DSL. Whatever, it's late anyway. Headed home?" The dog kept staring at the television, like maybe if she prayed hard enough Netflix fairies would come to the rescue. "Probably ain't comin' back tonight. Yo. Hey. Mutt."

She shut her eyes. "I don't know. I don't--I don't want to leave. I..."

"If you ain't leavin', there's fuck all to do here with the lights on and even with 'em out, I mean--"

"Danny," she muttered. "Stop."

"What do you want, then?"

Mel turned, opened her eyes, and tilted her head. "Can I have a hug?"

"I don't do hugs."

"Not in the mood, Danny."

"Yeah, I get that. Why?"

She shut her eyes again. "I don't want to go home yet. I... oh, heck. It sounds dumb. Dad's been so stressed with work, and... he and mom were fighting about some stuff. And first I thought I... I wanted to help and I hate there's nothing I can do to help and I felt so... dumb about that, too."

"That's not_dumb_," he ventured carefully.

"I didn't think so either, until I thought more about it, and I shouldn't even... I shouldn't even_be_ there. And I realized this is... this is it. I'm never moving out. I'm never getting married, I'm never... I can't... my job history is twelve hours of babysitting a month and I bake pies for people, so..."

"If you're looking for advice, I--"

She jerked sharply, and abruptly her eyes were fiercely--uncomfortably--on his. "No. I'm saying I'm a deadbeat, Danny, I'm not saying I'm the village idiot. You've never given me any advice that wasn't 'get the heck--get the_fuck_ over yourself' or 'drink more' so, no, Danny, I'm not looking for advice. I don't... you're right. I don't..."

The stoat was decent at reading people, not that it required any intuition at all to figure that telling her to shut up wasn't going to work out. "I don't know what you're trying to say."

"Me either. I don't know why I'm here. I_should_ leave. I guess."

"Ain't gotcha collared or nothin'."

"Oh, I_know_. But then I couldn't get my taste in TV shows made fun of."

It hadn't been a question and it didn't leave any good responses. "Is that it?"

"You make fun of other things, too."

"And I eat the pies."

She twitched, and broke eye contact. "Screw the pies. I... Maybe I should've... but it's... it's..." Melissa rambled her way through saying nothing, steeling herself only when Danny finally bristled. "Maybe that first time I came over I should've just... um. I told myself I was okay with it. I should've just... given you a... uh, gone down on you or something and that would be just_it_. And I wouldn't have to put up with you."

It wasn't the first time Danny had been on the receiving end of the suggestion that someone might stop 'putting up with him.' Depending on the quality of his recollections, it might not even have been the first time in August.

The notion presented itself that he could shove her off the fucking sofa and drag her to the door. What was keeping him? Not exactly like there'd been a_huge_ hole in his life labeled 'watch dumb movies and play checkers.'

Really, if it came down to it, who the fuck was the babysitter between them? She hadn't gotten up, though. It probably would come down to shoving. Maybe he wouldn't have to actually drag her, but it would definitely take a shove to get to the final tableau: half a burnt cookie and two unfinished beers reflected in a blank television set, and the sound of an ancient, shitty car trying to turn over...

And then, quiet. Then it would be quiet.

"Fuck," Danny said.

"What?" The mutt's voice was soft, slightly wavering, but she didn't seem like she was about to cry or anything. That might've made it okay. But instead she was quiet.

Next door, his neighbor Alex had the cable news on--muffled, meaningless voices, not like it would've made more sense in the same room. Beyond that was the hum of his empty refrigerator. Distant traffic out on US-101. A whirring fan from the computer waiting hopelessly for the TV to come back.

White noise. All so much white noise.

"I'm sorry for being a shit person."

Her ears stayed low. "That wasn't what I was trying to say."

"Well, it_was_, really. C'mon. Even if it wasn't, though, I'm still sorry. Shouldn't put you on the wrong end of it."

Melissa licked her muzzle nervously or hesitantly or whatever hangup caught her tongue the way it did so often. "You're not a... bad person, Danny. You're not. To me. Most of the time. On purpose."

The longer he didn't reply the more qualifications she added. He wondered if it might, perhaps, have been cathartic for her, but she stopped at 'on purpose.' "That part don't matter quite as much, does it?"

She gave him a helpless shrug. "I don't really mind hanging out with you. I don't wish that things had actually gone different or anything, and that wasn't nice of me. I was just upset because... it is_easier_ for you... you've got your life together and... what, Danny, what's the look for? You do."

"Sure. Here's the thing. The eclipse, y'know? That_is_ exciting. That shit's what passes for excitement in this fuckin' place. Goddamn tourists come up from San Francisco and fuckin' Eugene for a couple minutes, eat a burnt cookie, snap some pictures on their phone and never look at 'em again. Exciting."

"You have a way of taking the negative view."

"Well it might_strike_ you, not being the village idiot--your words, Melly--that they ain't gonna film that exciting shit so we can"--he nodded towards the television--"ya know, wait for it to buffer 'til we retire."

"No, I guess not."

"And you think when I was back in high school, or up at Chemeketa, or renting Adam Sandler movies to drunk washups at Mercado's video store--you think_this_ is where I figured I'd end up?"

"Are you going to tell me to get over myself?"

"Nah. Shit, I_am_ sorry about that, at least. Ain't my place--sometimes it is, don't get me wrong. Sometimes somebody needs sense knocked into 'em. I don't know what to say about your folks, Melly. Don't gotta go home if you don't want; whatever. Couch is yours. Doesn't fix everything, I know."

"Are... are_you_... okay?"

He laughed. Reflex, and neither sincerity nor intent, kept the ugliness at bay. "I'm fine, yeah."

"I had you figured for somebody who was pretty happy."

"Yeah. Well, I mean. Content. Shit, we ain't starving. If you can't be happy here, you're kinda fucked, right?"

"Alright." She was still uneasy, though, still fidgeting. She leaned forward to check how much beer was left in her bottle without bothering to pick it up. Her ears weren't quite flat, but they twitched uncertainly. "It's actually a little reassuring to know you aren't... that things get to you."

"Schadenfreude?"

"Who?"

Danny grunted. "Nah, forget it. It helps, huh?"

"Please don't take that the wrong way..."

"Lemme keep goin' then, if it makes ya happy, mutt. What I remember from the first time we met proper? You wanted me to help your dad out. But you went off about this table metaphor, remember? You said some people tried to make room, and some people wanted to kick 'em out, and folks like your dad were doin' what they could to make the table bigger."

"I guess. Uh. I was kind of nervous... I don't remember_everything_."

He shrugged. "Anyway, you said it. I admit I kinda thought that you mighta been on to something, or known something. Not like the professionals, right, not like these fuckin' idiots who can only talk in Impact font and Twitter threads, but that you mighta been right. Your dad wanted the right thing. It was worth trying."

"Look how that turned out," she said softly.

"Pretty much."

She tilted her head at him, curious. "You mean that? You decided it wasn't going to work?"

"Did it? You think shit's better than it was last fall? You think_anybody_ here thinks that?"

"No," Melissa admitted.

"Then what's the point? I had this asshole a few months back try to rope me into some grudge he had with a Mexican businessman. There's been more than a bit of that, for sure. Somebody called in an anonymous tip on Aidene Lopez, 'cause she was returning bottles at the IGA and they didn't like how she looked. I gotta deal with this shit somehow."

"You could quit, right?"

Danny figured that one wasn't even worth profanity. "And do what, start a blog? This guy, the guy with the grudge, kept tellin' me I should go along with him, 'cause 'we won.' Like I'd help take the country back, right? 'We won'." Thinking back on the dumb wolf and his appreciably pliable wife, Danny snorted, derision dripping from his words. "Yanno, though, Melly: they fuckin' did, of course. A buncha dipshits tryin' to make a time machine outta Confederate flags and AR-15s won, so... so what the fuck."

"So you went back to being your normal... grumpy... self, huh?"

"Grumpy?" He felt better about laughing. "You know, for fuck's sake, Melly, even the goddamn librarians manage to call me an asshole."

"I'm saving that word for someone else. I'll know when I see it. I'm not saying you're the nicest guy, Danny, but you're not... you could be worse."

He wasn't sure how to respond to that--damning with faint praise, to be sure, but it still_was_ praise. Kind of. The television show came back on, startling both of them. Melissa looked at it, then grabbed the remote and turned the television off again.

"I'm glad you put up with me," she said, putting the words in his mouth so he didn't have to say it.

"You still want that hug?"

"Are you offering?"

Not like he had enough dignity left to refuse. He shrugged. Melissa leaned into him, and he got an arm around the dog and gave her a squeeze. "You gonna be okay, though? You want to spend the night here?"

"I might... maybe things have cooled off back home; I don't know." Her lean grew stronger, and after a few more seconds she turned and hugged him back. He could feel the gentle wag of her pinned tail. "I appreciate the offer, though."

"Yeah. Any time."

She closed her eyes. "So I guess you're working Monday morning, then. That's not your normal shift, right? Are they going to make it up to you?"

"Yeah. Or they could pay OT, but the chief's gettin' tight as fuck with his budget, so that ain't gonna happen. I'll work a half-day Tuesday. Why?

"You want to do something? We should do something. We could get a fishing license, maybe? That might be fun, if you like fishing."

He would rather have driven the hook through his own bony fingers. "No."

"I could teach you to cook, then? It'd be like home ec."

"I hated home ec, too," the stoat muttered. "Miss Manning's voice always curdled everything."

"Then we'll try again." Melissa's tail wagged faster. "Tuesday afternoon. But only if you promise you won't stop inviting me over, when you can make your own pies."

"I didn't say 'yes' to the idea to start with."

"But?"

It was a little like having been handcuffed. The stoat sighed--grumpily. "Fine. Tuesday afternoon, then. You win. Happy now?"

August 20th: Sunday

"No." Allison had hesitated before answering Stef Kelly when he asked the ocelot if she'd been hiding from him. "No," she repeated, when he didn't react at first. "But I didn't want to make things any worse than they were going to be anyway."

"They weren't necessarily going to be bad, Allie."

She scowled at him. The last time they'd seen each other had been in his foyer, when she'd told him she was planning on leaving Cannon Shoals. Because she couldn't deal with it anymore, with the town or with Stef and his marriage or with_any_ of it, and all she'd wanted to do was tie up a few loose ends...

Not that she'd_stopped_ him from kissing her, of course. Hell, not even like she'd minded. Like she hadn't lost herself in the moment--or more than a few moments. Like, after they finally pulled away from one another, she hadn't spent the next day thinking about it... and the day after...

"Maybe they weren't, okay," the ocelot conceded. "But I thought it would be better if we both had a chance to cool off."

"Besides, I knew where to find you." Which he'd done: she was behind the front desk of the Beachcomb-Inn, and supposed to be working. Her boss asked for everyone to be around on the evening before the eclipse, because they were planning on being completely booked.

"Yeah." They were alone; the rush hadn't started and in the two hours since starting work she hadn't seen more than a few customers. And now the lobby radio was playing the Statler Brothers.Countin' flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all...

Apt, all thing considered.

She took a deep breath. "So what should I say, huh, Stef?"

"I'm not sure. I figured we should talk about it, though. We...should talk about it." Well, that's new for you. He hadn't been willing to talk about their past since her return to Cannon Shoals. It was a hell of a time to start.

"I don't know what to talk about," she said. "I feel like one of us should apologize, but I also feel like neither of us actually think we have anything to apologize for."

The fox nodded. "I don't feel like I do."

"So it's behind us, then."

"I don't know that it..."

Her boss, Zach Leon, chose that moment to come around the corner, a box of paper in the squirrel's arms. She helped him set it down beneath the countertop, distracting herself from the fox's conversation. "You really think we'll need_all_ of this?"

"No," Zach said. "But dad pointed out that we should change the roll before things get busy. If we run out when we've got a dozen guests in..."

"I mean, it's not like they've got anywhere else to go," Stef spoke up. "Everything in town is sold out."

"Everything in Cannon Shoals, Newport, Lincoln City..." Zach grinned--he and his dad were both in good spirits; it was the most business the inn had seen in years. "Don't you think I said that? You know what he said?"

Stef shook his head, but Allison had a decent idea of the gist. "He said 'oh, yes, Zach, but we want to make a good impression for the next time they come through!'" The squirrel laughed, and laughed harder when she kept going: "Don't you know, son, a loyal customer is worth their weight in gold." She translated in English for Stef's benefit.

"Did he actually say that?" the fox wanted to know.

"Pretty close." Zach was on his knees, opening up the ancient dot-matrix printer and removing the old roll of paper. "He's been reading a lot of books on small businesses while he's in the hospital. Mom had me give him my old Kindle--he's gotten more use out of that than I_ever_ did in just a few weeks."

"Yeah, I know. He's been talking about it to me. He's very excited." Allie liked Clarence Leon, whose quirky sense of humor belied his business acumen, and talking about the motel added a reassuring normalcy despite Stef's presence.

"Yeah, that's the problem. Some of it's a bit... over his head."

"How over his head are we talking?"

"He wants to start sending out an email newsletter. And when I asked who would write any of the content, he told me that we could 'just use Amazon,' because they have 'a lot of that in the cloud.'"

"Did you set him straight?" Allie could guess the answer there, too.

Zach stopped what he was doing to look up at her with a raised eyebrow. "Have you ever seen my dad set straight on_anything_? He also wants me to look into switching our cable provider over to Netflix."

Zach was his father's son; the dancing light in his eyes was proof that he was more than aware of the irony. Clarence was talking about Netflix and Amazon when the hotel's computer was older than any of the three people in the lobby, and Cannon Shoals' DSL service was an object of local derision.

"Think the printer's good to go," the squirrel said, and got back to his feet. "How were things while I was gone?"

"Fine. Uneventful. Been catching up with Stef."

"Don't let me stop ya. Might as well call this a lunch break."

Allison realized that the squirrel thought he was doing her a favor, and couldn't find a good way to correct the misconception. "You sure? If things get busy..."

But Zach merely laughed again, brushing it off. "Don't go to Medford for lunch, okay? But I figured you'd just be in the break room, right?"

The 'break room' was all of two chairs and a worn card table; Clarence had apparently once entertained the idea that it could be used as a game room for guests but it was too small for that, and awkwardly located.

At least that afforded them a little privacy; she couldn't see any guests. Stef took a seat in one of the chairs--carefully, as though it might break--and watched the ocelot expectantly. "So..."

"Roger's back from his parents now. You want to schedule another practice?"

"Oh, yeah. I should. One of the people who works down at Cap's called me, too... asked if we'd be interested in playing a set. We're good enough, right?"

"I think so. You guys are, for sure. I can get myself into shape."

"Oh, it's fine," Stef said. He was always saying the ocelot was too critical of her abilities. "Maybe a couple weeks, then. Work's kinda slowing down."

"It'll slow down here, too. Summer vacation's already over."

"Yeah." He looked around the room, not as though it might have answers but as though it might have the right questions for finding them in the first place. "Allie, can I at least get to ask you something? One thing?"

Allie felt weary without knowing why; her sigh was a tired one. "Stef, you know you can ask as many as you want."

"Do you believe that I would've stopped it from going any further?"

"Yeah. I would've, too."

"Good, okay. That's a start."

The ocelot tilted her head. "A start?"

"For figuring out where we go from here. I don't think we should act like nothing happened. I've been thinking about it a whole bunch since then."

"That so?"

Stef splayed his fingers out uncomfortably. "I don't want you to beat yourself up on it.I kissed you, Allie. I hope you're not upset."

All this thought you've givin' me is... conscience, I guess, she reflected. Dwelling on cynicism kept her from looking too closely at the fox. "I'm not upset."

"Really?"

"I don't think so."

But then, maybe she was. She_wanted_ to be. Stef was forbidden. He was married, and the ocelot had plenty of opportunities herself to settle down or escape or to do anything other than let what had happened, happen.

Allison got up and went to the window, which looked out the back of the hotel. The sky was hard: piercing and, for once, cloudless. If it held for the eclipse, that would make a lot of people damned happy. "Causing trouble again. Bad influence."

His chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it back from the table and joined her at her side. "Allie, don't say that. You're not a bad influence." Which was the kind of lie that was supposed to make her feel better.

Then again, what was the truth, anyway? If she was a bad influence, it was only on someone who was practically begging to be influenced in the first place. Not like she was about to get Zach to take up drugs instead of model boats. "I don't want to leave, so if you think I don't have to..."

"You don't. I guess I just... I just want to know where the limits are."

"What do you mean?" She turned away from the sun to look at the fox incredulously. "There's nothing to_limit_, Stef. Or... there shouldn't be."

"But there_is_." He took each of her paws, and gently pulled her the rest of the way around to face him. "As long as we're still seeing each other, there's something. I don't want you to leave town... I don't want you to leave the band..."

The sense of weariness hadn't gone away, although a different emotion began, slowly, to join it. It kept Allison from holding back. "And you know that I still have feelings for you."

His paws squeezed hers. "Do you?"

That was a weird question, now that she thought about trying to answer it.Yes. But... maybe not the way I used to. Before she left, when they were high-school sweethearts--classic Americana with a dash of marijuana and bad decisions--she figured maybe they'd get married and...

What followed the 'and' was nebulous and shaky in her imagination. She'd figured they'd have to live_somewhere_. Probably not in Cannon Shoals. Another town, with a better economy and more amenable locals. Eugene? Portland?

Simultaneously, though, she'd figured he would be with the band and traveling all the time. She'd figured they'd have normal-person jobs and also that he'd be a musician. She'd figured they'd go to school, eventually, but_where_ and when and how never turned out to be problems pushy enough to demand solutions.

So none of it really made sense. There was no way to boil that down into one word, but the thirty-second pause did the trick in qualifying "yes."

"That's a start, too," Stef said. "I feel the same way."

"Do you?"

Stef squeezed her harder, and bent down so their noses came closer. "Yes. Remember you said back at my house that you wanted it to be like the old days? I've been thinking about that a whole bunch."

"Why?"

"'Cause I don't think either of us do. We've changed--you have a degree, a real job... I have a real job... a house..."

"You got married," she pointed out. "So if you want to talk about limits, there's one, until they legalize polygamy."

"Mary wouldn't go for that anyway."

Mary, his wife, was the source of the inertia that held Steffan in place--the anchor that kept him from paying more attention to the band and put linens on the table in their dining room. She didn't like Allison, Allison didn't like her, both of them were right, and: "I guess 'what Mary wouldn't go for' isn't really a limit, huh?"

She didn't like the band, she didn't like him drinking with Allie and her friends. And it wasn't worth saying that she wouldn't have liked the way her husband closed the rest of the distance between his lips and Allison's, teasing a soft kiss from her failure to effect any sort of retreat.

"Oh, hell," she said, when it ended.

Stef cocked his head, and asked what was going on--what she was thinking about. He was and would always be handsome, the kind of fox whose narrow angles and bright eyes made him look rakish instead of devious, and the sunlight caught his features perfectly, but she was not thinking about that or him or the sunlight. She was thinking about cheap bread.

It was back in the winter of 2012. Her girlfriend Lara--they'd only been officially dating for a few weeks--had a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches and they had no bread. In the early months of her time in Cheyenne they'd been out of almost everything, but between the two of them they found seventy cents. Enough for a loaf of shitty off-brand white bread from the run-down Safeway.

Lara didn't feel like getting dressed, and Allison was the only one with a car, and so she'd bundled herself up and made it to the grocery store just before it closed. The snow was back in the "on" part of its off-again, on-again cycle and winter was still new, still beautiful to the ocelot.

Driving back she thought of how the sandwich would taste, and how Lara's muzzle would taste of it afterwards--and the gas gauge, which was just above 'empty,' and how Stef hadn't returned any of her calls, and her prick of a coworker Jason who didn't know how to take a fucking hint--and the Cherokee hit a patch of ice and went out of control before she could do anything about it.

That was, before she could_do anything_ about it but not before she had realized it. And as the Jeep skidded, she had a quiet eternity to feel the useless pressure of her foot on the brake and to see the glare of oncoming headlights--_that's right they say you always see a bright light--_and to mutter "oh, hell" and to be grateful nobody would hear her last words.

god damn it bread wasn't worth this are they gonna write in the obit that I died trying to buy bread is that what stef's gonna hear happened to me that I got my dumbfuck self killed for a grilled cheese--

A trucker stopped to help, and she was so shaky that she let him, though in the end it was just a ditch--no damage to her car at all--and she could've managed on her own. 'Be careful,' he'd said, and wished her a happy new year and given her the twenty-three dollars and eight cents in his wallet for new tires.

The money went to rent instead, and she never told Lara about the accident; the coyote wasn't the doting type. But Allison had never forgotten the feeling of watching an inevitable catastrophe in which she was a participant. Her arms had gotten around Stef's back, somehow. His muzzle was still open with the question he'd asked; still open when her coarse, feline tongue slipped between his lips.

Limits. They would be found. She would be careful. She wouldn't let it go any further than it had to, and... "Stef," she whispered. She was purring.

"Allison?"

"When you said 'limits'"--something about the word practically_forced_ her to kiss him again. At least she didn't do it intentionally. She intended to keep talking, it just took a bit of effort. "You... you didn't mean, 'what are we not gonna do?'"

"What did I mean, then?"

Maybe there was a_hint_ of bad influence in his eyes. Her tail swayed absently. "You want to know what we won't feel guilty about afterwards."

"Or won't cause problems." He licked her nose, dragging his tongue slowly over it. "I don't feel guilty about this."

"Same."

"But it might cause problems." Stef tilted his head towards the window; nobody was_watching_, but the sidewalk ran right past it... and he was right, because even if she didn't feel guilty reasonable people could disagree.

"We could go somewhere else."

"We could. You've got your lunch break left. Where would we go?"

"There's the supply closet," she said. It was close, and windowless, and she had a key. "If you wanted to talk with a bit of privacy."

The closet's only advantage was its privacy, as it happened. It wasn't any more well-furnished than the break room: metal shelves stacked with cleaning supplies and spare hardware, a stepladder, and a 1984 wall calendar from the Dodge dealership on Taylor Street.

"Didn't they close that..."

"Before we could drive? Yep." Allison pulled the door shut. "Now that I think about this, it's a very..." She looked around the little room. "It does feel a little like we're back in high school."

"Yeah." The fox's arms slipped back about her. "Being bad kids. Should be in class, right?"

"I_am_ on the clock," the ocelot pointed out. As soon as she started to stretch up on her toes, Stef tilted his muzzle down and the kiss was immediate and natural. "So I think we should come to some decisions... quickly."

He nodded. "The band is fine. Doesn't change anything about the band."

"Nope. Maybe we don't have to tell the others about this."

"I think it might be best if they didn't know. Less awkward." There wasn't even an 'oh, hell' when his lips locked on hers again--no time for it in the tense, electric thrill that ran through her.

Less awkward. "Yeah and--we don't--really have--anything to--mm!" She could only get her words out two at a time, and in the end he was pressing into her, every new kiss deeper, hungrier until she gave up.

Did he not want her to say 'hide'? They did have_something_ to hide--it would upset Mary--but it was only a kiss, wasn't it? They were only friends, they'd been honest about that, and sometimes friends were close...

Very close. The longer his body was pushed against hers the more his warmth soaked into it. Her back was to the door, holding it closed. Not like I can get away, she decided, which was enough of an excuse to tighten her hold on the fox greedily.

When he had to let her go, Stef was panting too hard to speak and she took the opportunity. "So if... if we get bored we can do this. That's fine..."

"Yeah..."

"Are you still bored?"

"Yeah," the fox said, grinning. "We should make good use of your break, right? Is anybody going to bother us here?"

She shrugged. "Probably not. And if they_do_..." How long did they have? She could spare another five minutes, certainly. The kiss back at his house hadn't lasted so long, and they were still both pretending to be things they weren't.

Allie reached behind her for the door lock, turning it and plunging them into sudden darkness. "Did you do that on purpose?"

Unseen--and blind--she rolled her eyes. "No, that was Clarence. Some energy-saving thing. I can unlock it again and--"

Stef kissed her so sharply, so deeply that she almost lost her balance and before she knew it she was clinging to him again, seizing him in desperate paws. At first the blackness didn't matter, she could imagine him perfectly with her eyes closed. And then, more than not mattering, it brought everything into sharper focus.

Allison couldn't see the doubt in his eyes, so there must not've been any. His ears must not have been flattened in hesitation--hers sure as fuck weren't. They were up, keen in the dark, catching his gasps as they deepened to growls, and the sound his claws made raking her shirt.

And his movements were purposeful and insistent and sure. Kneading, stroking, his paws left a heated trail on the ocelot's sides and shoulders. Then lower, caressing her arching back. Lower: he worked along her hips and grasped her lashing tail.

Lower.

When Stef groped her, and she felt his fingers squeezing the curve of her rear for the first time in five years, she moaned. One of the paws vanished; a heartbeat later it was over her muzzle. "Quiet," he whispered. "Okay?"

She nodded and thought that she would've taken a vow of eternal silence to have him touching her again--and thought that she also would've broken it almost immediately. But she could manage quiet, she believed.Hoped.

Because if she made any noises they might be discovered, and that would be...awkward, as he said. But it wasn't what he'd said that mattered--now the fox's fingers were inside her belt, pulling at it, undoing the catch...

And she knew that she might or could or should have stopped him, but he'd told her to be quiet, after all. Not that it was much of an excuse. And even if it_was_ that didn't excuse the eagerness as she fumbled out of her left shoe and kicked it away, so that her jeans could come off.

Without that--without her jeans, her panties or whatever passed for her better judgment--she felt him grinding up and against her again. Far more directly, more insistently; his pants were off too. Stef still had boxers on but they were thin, and the fabric was strained and taut.

The next step was that the boxers went, too. His lips clung to hers, hot, soft despite the tension. There was a short, rocking thrust that pushed the tip of his cock between her thighs; she gasped into his muzzle and despite_everything_, two winters and two springs and most of two summers of telling herself she'd changed, she would never lie to herself and say it was a protest.

As he pushed closer she pushed back, melting into the fox. And she felt the moment that he decided to give in--the way his movements froze and shifted down a gear into something less teasing and more...purposeful.

For the ocelot there was no decision, just the realization that she never would have actually tried to stop him. And in that moment, when he was adjusting his stance and the angle of his thrusts changed, she pushed herself up on her toes to help him--

And then the fox straightened and his steel-hard, silk-smooth cock was_in_ her again. Finally. She gritted her teeth and fought back the groan; its remnants escaped in a softly whimpered mewl as he hilted and she quivered on trembling legs around him.

After his second thrust, maybe his third, the fox caught the weakness of the ocelot's stance and his paws--sturdy machinist's paws, not just some demure guitar-playing high school kid--grabbed her hips to support her. To hold her in place as he started to fuck her... and already it had become that: rough. Ragged.

Purring hoarsely, Allison could do nothing but wrap her legs around the fox's bucking hips and try to hold on. There was a half a decade of denial in his tempo and half a decade of need in the ocelot's gasping moans. They couldn't look into each other's eyes and didn't need to: the plaintive, pointed ache he'd felt for her was clear in the way he held nothing back.Worth it, she would've said--figured she'd say later--though finding words was proving difficult.

But it_was_ worth it. The unfulfilled desire, those months in Cheyenne when she'd dreamed about him... he was pumping into her quick and hard now, silencing husky groans in the velvet fur of her spotted neck. Nothing had changed about the way he took her except that it seemed so...

So fucking dumb of you to try to fight this, Allie, the ocelot's mind raced. It could've happened back in the October she'd returned to the Shoals, she could've had him then. Could've been honest with him, begged him to be honest with her until he was fucking the hard, thick truth of it into her in her bedroom, or his, or the state forest... Could've had him against her, atop her--inside her, his exquisite heat stretching and filling her... God, waiting had been a bad idea.

Arguing had been a bad idea.

Anything but that moment had been a bad idea. Stef's paws clutched at her; his groping touch was straining, lust-tense and sharp. His muzzle opened, she felt it open--in the deep black of the lightless closet she could almost see the sound of his voice. A rippling, wind-tossed ribbon with her name emblazoned on it in glowing scarlet. Allie, oh fuck, Allie...

"Stef!" That was all she'd said but there was something in the_way_ she'd said the word. There must've been, because the fox groaned and shuddered. And his strong, eager pace took the aim of burying himself inside her, all the way up and into the helpless feline, forcing his length in up to the knot and teasing her with the familiar, straining demand of its girth.

She called out to him again, trying to be quieter. One of his paws covered her muzzle, the scent of his fur flooding her nose a testament to the futility of her own self-control. Instead she shouted for him, begging, wondering why it all seemed so desperate.

The ocelot's eyes, wide in delighted ecstasy, saw first nothing and then the sparks of a breaking tempest as that singing pleasure took root and she gave herself over to him. Everything went taut and tense and she was a little ball of quivering, wailing fur and flesh and electric guitar pushed into sweet distortion.

Allison jerked and shoved herself into him erratically, convulsively, crying out in uselessly muffled wails that the fox's paw caught and kept. She could no more have stopped herself then than she could've stopped earlier. Or stopped Steffan, when the fox gave in to a half-dozen hard thrusts and held still--almost. His quick, rhythmic throbbing would've been more telling if she'd had her wits about her.

But when had those ever helped?

The panting tangle of ocelot managed to work herself into some semblance of functionality--still supporting herself against the fox in the breathless aftermath of their coupling, leaning on him with her shaky legs refusing to obey. "Stef... did we really just..."

She stopped talking before his lips were_actually_ on hers; the darkness gave her some sort of precognition. "Did we?"

Of course they had. His shaft, softening with ponderous reluctance, slid from her to stay pinned and dripping against the fur of her thigh. "I think. You didn't knot me, though... there's that..."

"So maybe we didn't..."

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself close enough to fetch another kiss. "Maybe we'll have to try again, to be sure... I'll have some time after Monday. Maybe this weekend?"

"Mary's staying in town this weekend," he said, and his voice had dropped into a tawdry, conspiratorial whisper because they both knew they were no longer teasing. "After work?"

"I could work the evening shift, sure..." And she paused, and thought she might regret what she was saying but then it was too late. "Do you still love me, Stef?"

That time the kiss kept going, and even after she was out of breath he scarcely let her catch it before their muzzles were together once more. And at last, satisfied, she reached for the lock and started to turn it. His paw closed over the ocelot's own. "No... not quite yet. Let's stay a little longer, Allie..."

And she knew that was his real answer, and could do nothing but believe him.

August 21st: Monday

"Well, at least the fog's burned off. Maybe if I'd known I coulda gone somewhere else, 'cept you wouldn't have come with, huh?" Joan teased Zach because the red squirrel was comfortable with her, and took it in good stride. They'd been dating longer than he'd run the Beachcomb-Inn, anyway.

"And leave these fine people?" Most of them were out in the parking lot, in front of the motel. Zach stayed behind the counter just in case anyone had last-minute problems... or decided to help themselves to the contents of the snack stand.

"Wanna hear somethin' dumb?" she asked him.

"Is it a joke? He likes jokes." That came from Zach's dad Clarence, who seemed to have aged two decades since his son took over the day-to-day operations. His eyes, though, had never changed despite all the time in hospitals. They were twinkling, the way her mom's eyes never did when_Zach_ was around.

"Not really. The glasses are wrong, that's all. It's kind of my fault."

She picked up a pair, which they'd had printed up by some shop in Portland. They were eclipse glasses, made of light cardboard with perforations to adjust them to differently sized muzzles. Printed on the glasses was an image of the Cannon Shoals highway bridge, and the eclipsed sun behind it.

"It won't look like that," Joan explained--the glasses were Zach's idea, but Joan had asked Dawn Danis to paint the scene they depicted. "I confused north and south. So if you were actually on a boat with the bridge like this, the sun would be, um... over here on the counter somewhere, except of course it_wouldn't_ be on account of you not being able to see it anyway, but..."

"So it's impossible?" Clarence said. "You mean this is a misprint? Zach!"

"The phone number for the motel is correct, dad."

"Zach!" Clarence kept going. "Listen to her! This is a misprint! Limited edition! If this was a stamp, we could_sell_ these for ten times as much as we paid. 'The day the sun rose in the wrong direction on Cannon Shoals.' Over Cannon Shoals. I don't know, Zach, you're the writer, you go write it."

Zach muttered wearily, closing his eyes, and Joan gave her boyfriend a comforting embrace. Between the two of them, Joan was the one with the reputation for being high-strung--that just meant Zach hid it well. "What was that? That meant 'god help me,' didn't it?" Her Spanish was far from perfect.

"We can go with that. How long do we have?"

Joan leaned into the squirrel until he hugged her back, and only then got out her phone. "It started about thirty minutes ago. You can probably already see it with the broken glasses, if you want."

The crowd in the parking lot, at least, had stopped milling around. Some of them had set up their tripods; some of them were just staring up at the morning sky. The sun, over the Pacific Coast Range, had yet to dim perceptibly. It seemed like an ordinary day, if you ignored the crowds.

Zach didn't want to ignore the crowds any longer, though, it seemed. He locked the door to the snack stand so nobody could take anything and headed for the lobby door. Joan followed him outside; Clarence brought up the rear. Outside, Allison Navarro had paused for a smoke break; she was sharing it with a good-looking fox, the both of them grinning with some shared joke.

When Joan was in high school, Allie had been the one to dare her to climb the KCNS radio tower--that was pretty much the sum total of their interaction. Nowadays they were pretty close, or close enough because she worked for Zach, and there weren't many employees at the Beachcomb-Inn so you got to know most of 'em, and their friends too, except she didn't know exactly that the fox was a_friend_ of hers, and he was married if her memory served, but they looked to be having a good time together and...

And... maybe that was good enough? Joan's wandering thoughts looped back around to deciding what was and was not her own business. Zach chided her for being nosy sometimes, generally just before asking her what she'd heard and if it was interesting.

A visiting couple drifted over towards them--a Border Collie like Joan and, at his side, a red panda with her adorable mask accented by the glasses. Joe Morgan was her cousin, spending the weekend in Cannon Shoals with his wife. "Picked a beautiful morning for it, guys," the dog said.

"Ah, it's just the coast," Zach answered. "I can't take credit."

"I can." Clarence nodded swiftly, then repeated himself in case they'd misheard. "I can. I prayed for it. I figured: a man of my age, you have to choose your prayers wisely. Look." The squirrel pointed up to the deep blue sky, broken by the breathy puffs of listless clouds. "It worked."

"You don't pray, dad. You haven't even been to church in fifteen years."

Clarence was unfazed by that practicality. "You see? So we had a lot to catch up on, but I got this taken care of, first."

Zach rolled his eyes, but he patted his father's shoulder, too. "Well, okay.Thanks, then, dad. Thank my dad, Joe." The Border Collie nodded in appreciation.

His wife took the glasses off and grinned. "You must be a powerful sorcerer, right? My people admire that kind of thing. Is he a powerful sorcerer, Joe?"

Joe's ears flattened, and Joan felt the need to come to her cousin's rescue. "Very. This inn used to be a boulder, 'cept then Clarence smote it... smited? I think it's smote. He smote it with his staff and the Beachcomb-Inn sprung into existence. Surprising many onlookers."

"Of course! They were expecting loaves and fishes."

"Dad!" Zach said sharply. "Are you blaspheming? Stop blaspheming. If mom heard you she'd have a fit." Joan giggled, both at Zach's outburst and the simple truth that his mom was always having some kind of fit or another. "It's not funny! Well... it's mostly not funny."

"It isn't." Shanti Morgan, the red panda, was still grinning. "That's how you get all this nonsense. In my people's mythology, angering the gods is what caused a dragon to come and eat the sun, as you know."

Joan liked Shanti; she was glad the couple had started making a point of coming back home more often. Shanti didn't feel six years older than Joan and Zach. "What's up with 'your people,' anyway? Have you been talking to Joe's dad again?"

"Maybe," she answered. Joe growled something impolite under his breath. "Okay,yes. He wanted to know if we had any special traditions. I made something up. I hope it wasn't too offensive."

"Offensive," Joe kept growling, "is asking you to help him set up the new television because it comes from China and they think the instructions might make more sense in the original Chinese."

Shanti winked. "It came from Korea," she amended, to let them in on the joke; then she gave her husband a kiss and patted the side of his wrinkled muzzle when that didn't do the trick. "Your parents mean well. They're... what's the phrase? 'Good people.'"

"Parents always mean well." Joan said that for Clarence Leon's benefit; the squirrel grinned to let her know he appreciated the compliment. "It's starting to get darker, isn't it?"

Shanti put the glasses back on and glanced up at the sun. "Definitely looks funny..."

The morning sky began to take the yellow glimmer of a second sunrise. Joan hoped Zach would be able to enjoy it: he'd been a ball of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed stress for the entire month and it wasn't like she didn't_understand_ that, no, but even a squirrel had to be able to relax sometimes if you asked her.

Which he didn't, so she had to take some initiative, folding a second set of glasses for him and staring, paw on her hip, until he took them and put them on. "It does look_funny_. Like a... a crescent sun..."

She'd been around the previous afternoon when he checked in a family from California, and they'd called the eclipse a 'once in a lifetime' event. The Border Collie knew that astronomically, of course, it was all nonsense, but if you thought about it in another way...

In another way, Beachcomb-Inn was old enough to have seen the sun go out in 1979, by her reckoning, but what were the odds it would be around for the next one? What were the odds_she_ would be?

Wasn't the kind of bet she'd take--not that it mattered since they didn't offer bets on that sort of thing, and anyway if she up and asked Zach he'd say she was being_awfully morbid again_, but it got her to thinking, for sure. A few more minutes had gone by; the light kept dimming and folks were starting to murmur and point.

Five minutes, she heard one of them say.

Dragons or not, what must it've been like to be some farmer, looking up at mid-morning on a darkened sky and a sun reduced to molten, feeble gold? They would've thought the world was ending--who could've blamed them? But_she_ knew that it was not. Joan grabbed Zach's paw, knitting their fingers together so he couldn't go getting distracted.

Ain't it funny you'd have a thought like that, now, Joan? Awful distractible yourself on account of that brain of yours and--and she smiled, and something in her posture tipped Zach off. He glanced over. She kissed him, as the sun went out, and then turned to watch the rest of it.

The world didn't end.

The sun hadn't been eaten.

The light came back, one shadow at a time.

One of the town cops walked over, picking his way through the crowd. She knew Danny well enough to know exactly how he'd begin his conversation with Zach, all sardonic and grumbly and world-weary.Well, fuck, that sure was worth it, wasn't it?

The policeman gestured at the parking lot. "Everybody okay? Nobody burnt their eyes out?"

Zach shook his head. "Nobody's complained, anyway."

"Good news, I guess." Joan could see the glinting sun reflected twice, first off Zach's glasses and then the hard, cool crystals of the stoat's eyes. "Caught it okay from here?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Pretty well. Kinda hard to miss a fuckin' thing like that, though." He flashed a needle-toothed grin at them. "These guys out front stayin' for today or you gonna get 'em movin? Need cattleprods?"

"Are you offering?" Zach asked. "Do you have one?"

"Folks get awful pissy 'bout police brutality when we do that, so I can't--not unless ya give me a good excuse. Try your luck?"

"Laziness," he offered. "How about laziness?"

"No shit: it's Monday morning. If they let me shock people for that, I might even like my job. Alright, guys. Call if you need help, otherwise... well, warn the herd it'll be fuckin' slow as shit gettin' out. Feels like we got half the fuckin' coast here."

"Can you blame them, son?" Clarence looked away from the second dawn, smiling at the cop. "This was a good place to see it."

The younger man barked his ragged laugh. "You're tellin' me? Ain't like I left, was it?"

"It_is_ pretty," Joan spoke up. Daylight returned, leaving nothing so much as an ordinary August morning on the Oregon Coast, with the sun climbing innocently over green hills on the far side of the bay.

Elsewhere in the parking lot, the tourists were starting to pack up. Back to Seattle, or Portland--or Yuba City or San Bernardino, those names that had once sounded foreign and mystical, before she'd visited a few and decided they had their charms but concealed no fountain of youth, no magical totem. Even Joe and Shanti would be leaving for New Orleans early in the afternoon.

But for a few seconds, until they all went their separate ways, the six of them stared across the bay to the horizon, and the empty sky that followed the sun's rebirth over Cannon Shoals in the few hours before the town fell once more into quiet. Light danced on the low water of an incoming tide, under the flitting silhouettes of wheeling gulls.

Danny clicked his tongue. "You could do worse."